Are you saved?

Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Our Lord gives us a frightening parable of judgment in answer to the question: “Sir, will there be only a few saved?” You may think that this question is ludicrous, that it’s making a mountain out of a molehill. You may even volunteer to beat Jesus in giving the answer to this man: “of course not! Don’t you know that everyone’s going to be saved?” Although official Catholic teaching and Protestant understanding of salvation shares many points in common, this is where they defer – at least in popular imagination. Many Catholics believe that everyone is going to heaven while Protestants think that almost everyone, unless you are a true Christian believer, is going to hell.

When Protestants ask Catholics if they have been saved, the question would most likely be met with a stunned look on the part of the Catholic or an admission that he has never thought about this before. This comes as good news to the Protestant as he can now confidently proselytise the Catholic and ensure that the latter is saved by becoming a Bible believing, faith professing Protestant Christian. For many Protestants, one becomes a Christian by merely making a confession of faith in Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Baptism comes later but isn’t necessary for our salvation. I guess the reason why most Catholics are not prepared with an answer to that question is that salvation or rather, heaven, is something they often take for granted. Why worry about this moot issue when we can all get to heaven?

Perhaps, this common Catholic misunderstanding of universal salvation can be far more dangerous than the Protestant heretical position of being saved once and for all by grace alone. When you believe that salvation is guaranteed whether you’ve lived a good life or not in conformity to Christ’s teachings and God’s will, it is called the sin of presumption, which is a sin against hope. On presumption, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God’s almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).” (CCC 2092) When people are presumptuous, they are living in denial of the truth. And because they are living in denial, they will not repent of his or her own sin.

I have often tried to explain the Catholic position on salvation to both Catholics and non-Catholics by using this analogy of being shipwrecked in the middle of an ocean. We’re like the survivors of a shipwreck in a storm out in mid-ocean. Just imagine being in this situation. The nearest shoreline is just too far for even the strongest swimmer. You won’t be able to save yourself. The only way that we can get out of this situation is that we are saved. And the good news is that we have been rescued from drowning by the Lord Jesus Himself, our Saviour, and welcomed onboard the ship we call the Church. That ship is now taking us to a safe harbour — our home in heaven with God. For Protestants, being saved is the end of the story and they don’t even believe you need a boat for this. But for Catholics, baptism, being rescued into the ship is just the first step. But we’re not home yet.

You could say, then, that we’ve been “saved” in the sense of being rescued and taken aboard a safe vessel. But we can’t really speak of being “saved” in the full sense until we reach our destination. We must humbly admit that we haven’t yet arrived at final perfection. Meanwhile, we also must recognise the sobering possibility that — God forbid — we could choose someday to jump overboard again. Salvation isn’t guaranteed just because of something we’ve done in the past. We continue to have a free will, which is part of God’s likeness in us. So we still have the ability to turn away from God again. It’s a chilling possibility. But it shouldn’t make us perpetually worried that we’ll be damned despite our best efforts to grow in grace. We can be confident that God desires our salvation, and He’s faithful to help us. And He does so by providing us with the Sacraments. If we’re tempted to forsake Him, He’ll grant us the power to resist that temptation. He will even send a lifeboat to rescue us again through the sacrament of penance. Even so, the choice is still ours.

If we can’t be certain as to the final statistics on the population of heaven and hell, there are some things we can know with certainty because our Lord has revealed this to us, leaving no room for speculation.

Firstly, Hell is real and it is everlasting. We may not hear much about hell these days and we may not even like to, but silence on the subject does not make the reality of Hell go away. Infact the denial of hell leads ultimately to the trivialising of heaven. But a healthy understanding of the pains and horrors of hell, will lead us to an authentic appreciation of the joys of heaven.

Secondly, life is a series of choices. We can either choose to take a) the difficult path that leads to the narrow gate and life, and b) the broad path which leads to the wide gate and destruction. The narrow path is the way of the Cross which our Lord undertook, and we must follow in our respective way. The second reading from Hebrews reminds us that the suffering we endure is not the result of a cruel sadistic God but because “suffering is part of your training; God is treating you as his sons.” It is a popular error of our time to believe that it does not matter which road one takes. Some believe that all roads are like spokes on a wheel, all leading to the same place—Heaven. In fact, we make choices every day that draw us closer to God or lead us farther away from Him. That’s why simply believing in Jesus isn’t enough. Friendship with God, like friendship of any kind, is more than just getting acquainted. It involves making a series of choices to love over the long term, so that a committed relationship grows. Faith is useless then, without good works. God must have our active cooperation, because both our mind and our will — the full likeness of God — must be renewed if we’re to be saved in the end.

Thirdly, there is an urgency to making the right decision. Time is of the essence. No time for procrastination or putting off what must be done today. Our Lord speaks of the time when the householder will arise, shut and lock the door. That corridor of opportunity will not always be opened and if mistaken that it is always open may lead to our destruction.

Finally, we must make our own salvation and the salvation of all those around us, our top priority in this life. As the old Catholic adage reminds us: “the salvation of souls is the supreme law!” Nothing else ranks anywhere close in importance—not health, wealth, career, popularity, possessions or acclaim by others. Know what you must do to be saved and work out that salvation in fear and trembling.

Today, let us not be guilty of the sin of presumption that Heaven is guaranteed no matter how or which way we live our lives. Truly, our Lord Jesus is the Divine Mercy. Truly, He wishes and desires for all of us to be saved. But more urgently, He wants us to understand that there can be no other way to salvation other than passing through the Narrow Door. He is that Narrow Doorway to Heaven. It is the Gospel of Christ, paid by His own blood on the cross. It is demanding. It demands that we make the ultimate sacrifice by turning our backs on all the false gods that have become the defining elements in our lives. It demands repentance on our part.

Proclaiming the Glory of God

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today’s feast does not sit well with Protestants. It will be no surprise that those for whom the bible is paramount, for whom nothing can be said without clear biblical justification, the doctrine of the Assumption is not something they are easy with. We use the gospel reading on the Visitation, because there is nothing in the gospels that describes the Assumption in the way that the Visitation is described. Elsewhere, Psalm 132, where the Blessed Virgin is interpreted as the “Ark of God” that is taken into heaven, is cited. Along with similar interpretations of Genesis 3:15, 1 Corinthians 15:54, and Revelation 12:1-2, this hardly amounts to an explicit expression of the dogma of the Assumption; on their own, they are not a ringing endorsement. So, why is this gospel passage selected for today? How do we draw a trajectory from the Visitation to that of the Assumption?

We know so little of Mary even from the few scriptural references to her. How could the Church, therefore, make this leaping conjecture to speak of her as the most honoured and glorified creature of God, exalted above all creation, and uniquely sharing the privilege of incorruptibility of her Son at the end of her earthly sojourn? I would like to propose that the answer to all these questions is found in the great hymn of Mary, the Magnificat, described by Pope Benedict XVI as a “marvelous canticle (that) mirrors the entire soul, the entire personality of Mary. We can say that this hymn of hers is a portrait of Mary, a true icon in which we can see her exactly as she is.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary confesses in the inspired hymn, guided by the Holy Spirit, that the source of her “greatness” and “blessedness” is not found in any personal merit but in God. She does not exalt herself as others are prone of doing but immediately the greatness of God when she hears of Elizabeth’s praise of her and the child within her womb. Just as the Magnificat is a song that glorifies and exalts God, today’s feast of the Assumption is an Opus Magnum to God who raises her up to share in His heavenly glory. 

The erudite Pope Benedict continues to explain: “Mary wanted God to be great in the world, great in her life and present among us all. She was not afraid that God might be a “rival” in our life, that with his greatness he might encroach on our freedom, our vital space. She knew that if God is great, we too are great. Our life is not oppressed but raised and expanded: it is precisely then that it becomes great in the splendour of God. The fact that our first parents thought the contrary was the core of original sin. They feared that if God were too great, he would take something away from their life. They thought that they could set God aside to make room for themselves.”

But this is not the case of Mary. She understood that her lowliness and littleness was the perfect occasion for God to exhibit His power and greatness. This was no virtue-signaling stemming from a misguided sense of false humility. Although what God had done and was doing in her life was radically new, because nothing like the Incarnation had ever happened or could ever be conceived, it was not a radical departure from what God had done in history and will continue to do until the end of time. The Assumption is precisely the best testimony and proof of what the Lord has promised to do in scripture and what Mary had sung in this song of praise. 

The difficulty of Protestants and other detractors in accepting the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is that they often confuse this event with the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. At a superficial level, one could say that the Ascension is recorded in the gospels while Mary’s Assumption isn’t. If the Bible was the only record of revelation, this would be irrefutable proof that the belief in the Assumption is untenable. Case closed. Full stop. But for us Catholics, the deposit of faith is not only found in written Sacred Scripture but also in oral Sacred Tradition, the former affirming the validity of the latter. Although there is no record of the life and death of Mary after the death, resurrection and Ascension of her Son, Sacred Tradition provides us with the source material to fill in the blanks. While the relics and tombs of the apostles were venerated from the earlier centuries, Mary left no first relic  of her physical body. But we honour the place where she was buried and just like her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the tomb is empty. There is no body because as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death."The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians.”"

So, the real fundamental difference between the Ascension of our Lord and the Assumption of our Lady would be their respective causes. The Ascension of Christ was by His own power. Only Christ has ascended to Heaven. In the Gospel of St. John, Jesus told Nicodemus, ”No one has ascended into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven, the Son of man” (John 3:13). But the Glorification of Mary’s body and her Assumption was not by her own power, however. It was by the decision and act of God. So, to deny that it is impossible for Mary to be assumed into heaven both body and soul, is a direct affront to the sovereignty and power of God - to assert that God is powerless to do so.

Although the Assumption of Mary and the Ascension of the Lord are two different events, both of them indicate a way of elevation for us, human and spiritual, to which we are all called. The beauty of these callings is that they invite interior growth, renovation and transformation in our lives. Furthermore, these celebrations of our Church remind us that “death” is not the end of our human story. Death is just a transition to the true life with God, life eternal in the fullness of God’s love.

 

At the end of Mary’s life on earth, Mary is taken up to heaven in body and soul. She, who never knew sin, was assumed into heaven and never experienced corruption. Mary, as the new Eve, fulfilled God’s plan from the beginning of creation. Mary always lived perfectly in the will of God. The handmaid of the Lord has laid down for us the perfect model of discipleship that we may follow. We are called to live in the will of God and we don’t have to do this alone. She is there to help us.

Fire and Baptism

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Most people who volunteer to serve in church are often moved by a sincere passion to do good, to make a difference and to contribute something to the building of the community. They would expect approval, appreciation, praise, and support for the time and energy that they dedicate or sacrifice for the Church. But unfortunately, that is an ideal very far from reality. They will soon have to deal with the adverse criticism, envy, and jealousy. Little do they realise that everything goes south pretty soon. The ease and speed with which opposition, skepticism, mockery, or hostility manage to douse the initial enthusiasm, dampen the ideals and render harmless the noblest teaching is surprising.

This is what Jeremiah, the doomsday prophet of the waning kingdom of Judah and the holy city of Jerusalem, had to face when he brought God’s dire warnings to His people. His message was not meant to be an insult but it was taken as such. His words were targeted at moving the insolent people to repentance but they had the opposite effect - their hearts grew more hardened. In trying to save the city and the kingdom, they viewed it as a threat of violence, perhaps even viewing Jeremiah as a spy planted by their enemies to discourage them. So, instead of welcoming this final warning with open eyes, they manufactured their own destruction by throwing the Lord’s prophet into a well and leaving him to die. No wonder there was no prophet left to warn Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The price one had to pay for telling the truth was just too costly and served as a deterrent to the rest.

So, what would we prefer? A sugar-coated lie or the stinging painful truth? Even though the sweetness of the former may be preferred to the bitterness of the latter, we must acknowledge that only the truth can save us, only the truth can set us free. Lies can only provide us with false security, and perhaps that is more dangerous than in seeing the truth and acknowledging the risk of what is to come.

Our Lord would not lie to those who wish to follow Him. He doesn’t promise them a bed of roses, a peaceful conflict-free existence but one which would be marked by violence and conflict. Not that Christians would be wielders of the sword except the sword of truth, but that many of them would suffer death and injury at the hands of others who will hold the sword of violence and hostility towards them and the message they bring. If this is the fate of the Master, what will be that of the disciples, the torchbearers of His fire? They too will provoke—ensures the Lord —dissensions, divisions, and hostility and have to reckon with painful lacerations within their own families

Our Lord uses two images to convey this truth - fire and baptism. Violence and destruction can be clearly discerned from the image of fire. But how about the benign image of baptism? A stark contrast is intended here. What do we need for baptism? Water, the opposite of fire. Water is lifesaving. It provides life and nourishment and it can douse the flames of fire. But scriptural reference to water is anything but benign. From the watery chaos before God’s work of creation, to the great flood of Noah’s time that carried out God’s judgment in destroying a wicked generation and a fallen world, water is meant to be a destructive force. But after the flood, the rainbow appears in the sky, a symbol of peace restored between heaven and earth. God swears: "Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth" (Gen 9:11). From this promise, a conviction is born and spreads in Israel that, to cleanse the world of iniquity, God would no longer use water but fire: "For by fire will the Lord execute judgment … against all mortals" (Is 66:16).

What is this fire all about? It is natural to think of the final judgment and eternal punishment that awaits the wicked. St John the Baptist speaks of the coming Messiah who will baptise us with “the Holy Spirit and fire ... . The chaff he will burn in everlasting fire" (Mt 3:11-12). The two brothers, James and John, wanted to call down fire from heaven against the Samaritans (Lk 9:54), but our Lord refused to do so. The fire of God is not intended to destroy or torture those who made mistakes. It is the instrument with which He wants to destroy evil and purify us from sin.

But the fire announced by the prophets and lit by the Lord also saves, cleanses, and heals: it is the fire of His Word; it is His message of salvation; it is His Spirit, that Spirit who, on the day of Pentecost, descended like tongues of fire on the disciples (Acts 2:3-11) and has begun to spread around the world like a beneficial and renewing blaze. Now we can make sense of the exclamation of the Lord: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!” (v. 49). It is the expression of His burning desire to see the weeds of the world soon destroyed. Malachi announced: "The day already comes, flaming as a furnace. On that day all the proud and evildoers will be burned like straw in the fire" (Mal 3:19). Jesus looks forward to the realisation of this prophecy.

Finally, we come to the most troubling statement of our Lord in this entire passage, which comes in the form of a rhetorical question which our Lord Himself provides the answer: "Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." A baffling statement because in the books of the prophets, it is written that the Messiah would be "the prince of peace"; during His reign, "peace will have no end" (Is 9:5-6); and St Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians: "He is our peace" (Eph 2:14). Will the proclamation of the Gospel bring into the world, among peoples, in the families, harmony or discord?

It is true, the prophets promised peace for the messianic times but also announced conflicts and separations. When the Lord speaks of misunderstandings between generations (young and old) and among those living in the same house, He does nothing but quotes a passage from the prophet Micah (Mic 7:6). This should not come as a surprise because it has been prophesied. Conflict would be inevitable. There will be those who wished to preserve the status quo, hold onto sin, unjust structures, inhuman situations, every manner of vice, who would not wish to have these challenged or taken from them. Whoever feels threatened by the ‘fire’ will not remain passive. He will oppose the fire by all means. Truth and falsehood, virtue and vice cannot be bedfellows. This is the cause of division, conflict, persecution and violence.

Unity may not always be good. Unity must be sought from the Word of God, from the truth. Peace founded on lies and injustice cannot be favoured. It must at times provoke healthy divisions with much love and without offending anyone. One must not confuse hatred, violence, offensive, and arrogant words—which are incompatible with the Christian choice—with the honest challenge, disagreements that arise from following Christ. Don’t be disheartened when you meet with criticisms and challenges even from those you consider as family or who are members of your community. These are needed, even if painful, especially when we choose to live lives in conformity to Christ in a world that does not know Him and which has rejected Him.

I can see clearly now

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

One of my favourite feel-good go-to songs when I need an emotional uplift is that classic 70s song by Johnny Nash, “I can see clearly now.” For those of you millennials, Gen Z’s and Alphas who do not know what I’m talking about, here are the lyrics: “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna’ be a bright (bright), bright (bright), sunshiny day”.

I love the lyrics. Here is a person who has known the wet rainy days of life, when the sun is obscured by the dark clouds of pain, misery and loss. When the “hard rain” is pouring down all around, it’s easy to miss the beauty around you, the opportunities open to you. But everything changes when the rain stops. And there is a certainty that the rain will stop no matter how long we may have to endure it. We have arrived at a moment of clarity. Now that the rain is gone, the fog has dissipated, we can finally see the obstacles preventing us from the goals and dreams we have been pursuing without success.

This is what the faithful men and women of the Bible experienced, and the testimony of their faith is what we heard in the second reading taken from the letter to the Hebrews. It is through the piercing vision of faith that they were able to hope beyond hope, to keep on moving despite all the obstacles and setbacks, to persevere in spite of failure, and to reach their goals and beyond. What set them apart from other men and women were their faith in God. They did not rely on their own strengths or resources or human ingenuity. Rather, their motivation was rooted in a deep trust in a God that they believed would always keep His promises, and He did, even going beyond their expectations. Unsurprisingly the story of Abraham whom we call “our father in faith” has a prominent place. Abraham is proposed as a powerful model of Christian faith because his whole life was lived as a pilgrimage. Even when he was in the Promised Land of Canaan, he recognised that this was not his true homeland, but only a sign of it. It points beyond itself – as all signs do.

What would have made them give up their familiar surroundings, the security of family and kin or even their wealth? The answer can be found in the gospel. These heroes of the Old Testament saw a glimpse of what our Lord clearly promises in the gospel: “Sell your possessions and give alms. Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” They were able to give up what most people would prize and treasure because there was something better awaiting them. Heaven is our ultimate destination and true home. Life may be filled with dark dreary and wet days, but the Lord promises that what is to come is only a never ending “bright sunshiny day.” The dark clouds in our life will disappear. This is not just wishful thinking or false optimism. Faith informs us that things can and will work out in the end. This is what the Book of the Apocalypse (21:23) assures us: “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”

Having such a vision of the future does not mean that we should just sit on our hands and do nothing. Our Lord tells us that we should be like faithful servants who are constantly at work while remaining vigilant: “See that you are dressed for action and have your lamps lit. Be like men waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks.” This sounds like our Lord is imposing a dress code, perhaps the one thing that is most unpopular in any Catholic parish, as I noticed many of you flinch at the mere mention of it. But the reality is that the dress code imposed by the church merely reflects in a sacramental way the proper inner disposition of a disciple. To be “dressed for action” translates to have our “loins girded,” to be dressed for a journey, a new exodus as we follow Christ on the path of discipleship that leads to the cross. You do not have the luxury of dressing down or be in your most comfortable pyjamas. Christian discipleship is a call to action, not a license to loiter on your sofa and wait for others to do the work.

The second metaphor used by the Lord, which is having our lamps lit, makes a perfect segue into the parable of the servants who await their master’s return from a wedding feast. The parable clarifies the meaning of the metaphor. The lamps refer to the constant state of watchfulness and vigilance. No Christian, no disciple of Christ can be caught off guard. I’ve constantly repeated this ad nauseam: there is no sabbatical or ‘day-offs’ for Christians because the Son of Man is already at the wedding feast. When He returns at the unexpected hour, He will introduce the disciples into His banquet, provided that they are awake and ready. As an incentive and motivation for vigilance, the parable promises a reward for the faithful servants: the Master himself will be at their service. But for the steward who has decided to fall asleep on the job and take additional liberties especially in mistreating others, “his master will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know. The master will cut him off and send him to the same fate as the unfaithful.” Don’t feign ignorance. You’ve been warned!

So, if we find ourselves in this present life, unsettled, uncomfortable, sorrowful and suffering, then we have the assurance that this hardship is part of our journey into joy. We are all on our journey, an exodus from the slavery to sin, to the freedom of becoming heirs of the Kingdom. Of course, it is indeed the task of the whole Church, and of every Christian – to make that hope believable, to make the pilgrimage to God sustainable, to bring into the lives of the sorrowful the authentic joy of Christ’s victory over sin and death.

Christians are called to be pilgrims of hope, more so as we are reminded this year being a Jubilee Year with the above theme. We must be in a constant state of departing. We are people “on the Way.” Thus, our every action and existence in the here and now becomes more urgent when we do not lose sight of the fact that God may call us to account at any moment. Every moment, every deed, every decision ceases to be trivial when our lives are lived and shaped directly in and toward the light of eternity. If we forget this immediacy, we end up abusing our stewardship of this earth; and injustice and oppression becomes staple activities.

Our gospel tells us that the Son of Man will come when we do not expect – He will break into history not when it seems to be finished, nor indeed when all seems hopeless, but at a time that makes sense to Him. The rain will stop, the clouds will disperse, the obstacles will be removed, and the sun will shine brightly once more with no fear of night. But when He does come, He expects to find us working for that Kingdom which He alone can bring to completion. So, with our lamps lit, let’s get working, let’s be dressed for action, so that we can indeed face the future, and the present, with courage and joy.

Every night, as we conclude with Compline, the night prayer, we sing this beautiful hymn, Abide with Me, written by H. F. Lyte. What Johnny Nash merely suggested in his popular song is made apparent in the lyrics of the final stanza of Lyte’s hymn:

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.